The Most Charming Kids at the Children Festival in Japan

November 15, or the week including November 15, everywhere in Japan, you can see the incredibly charming, dressed in bright kimonos kids, hurrying with moms, dads and grandparents to a nearby temple. Because these days the favorite holiday of all the Japanese ancient Shichi-Go-San, or the feast of the children.

Shichi-Go-San (“Seven-Five-Three”) is a traditional rite of passage and festival day in Japan for three- and seven-year-old girls and three- and five-year-old boys, held annually on November 15 to celebrate the growth and well-being of young children. As it is not a national holiday, it is generally observed on the nearest weekend.

1. This children’s party, whose history goes back more than 300 years, can be called a common birthday for all children, which this year is 3, 5 or 7 years.

2. These odd numbers since ancient times in Japan were considered magical, and the corresponding age reflect the important and crucial stages of growing children.

3. Feast of Shichi-Go-San accompanies many traditional rituals and traditions.

4. One of the oldest and important ceremonies for boys and girls who have reached the age of three, was considered a rite of Kamioka – “savings hair.”

5. In ancient Japan in the early childhood kids shaved their heads, so that then they were growing long beautiful hair, always rightly be seen as the pride of the Japanese. By the day of the Kamioka boys grew their hair so that they could tie to the back of the head, and the girls tied bundles of hair.

6. Also in the Middle Ages in aristocratic families of three boys for the first time wore hakama – traditional men’s clothing in a wide trousers with pleats.

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8. Later this ceremony has been held every five years, this is the age samurai lords were their children by introducing them into the circle of adults.

9. More important for girls age seven years since the day they first tied “adult” Time for kimono – the obi.

10. This ceremony is called obi-talkie (“change belt”), symbolizes growing up, because on that day the girl the first time in my life dressing like a grown woman.

11. In general, the age of seven years in Japan is considered the most important stage of growing up a little man – before people in Japan believed that the birth of a child in the house settles itself a celestial being, or his messenger, and that up to seven years of a child – it’s not a simple man, and the divine creation.

12. This explains the superstition too lenient, at first glance, an attitude that show Japanese parents in relation to their young children unconditionally indulging in any of their pranks and caprices. Few places have small children so spoiled, as in Japan.

13. However, once the child is “critical” age of seven attitude is changing, as from this time he is believed to be converted into an ordinary person, and is replaced by cloudless years of happy and serene childhood comes during a demanding and harsh upbringing.

14. But the feast of Shichi-Go-San children – young lords. Parents are always concerned about how to make this holiday a memorable and striking the child’s life.

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16. The main ceremonial custom holiday – visit the temple: parents bring festively dressed three boys and five girls and three and seven years in a Shinto temple to thank the gods for the fact that children grow up healthy and happy.